Browsing by Author "Davies, Johanna Maria"

This Master's Thesis examined the United States' foreign policy in respect to Cuba, because (1) the Cuban crisis epitomizes the failure and dangers of much of the United States' foreign policy. Furthermore, (2) the analysis of the conflict between the respective countries has been neglected since the Cold War ended. The main concept of this thesis is ‘threat’, and it establishes the core of the research questions. Firstly, I examined as what kind of threat Cuba is presented. Secondly, how is Cuba constructed as a threat in the foreign policy rhetoric of the United States? Finally, I asked why this threat is created. I examined - in a similar way that David Campbell, Michael Shapiro, Hayward Alker and Riikka Kuusisto have done - the way in which the identity of the United States has been written through the writing of threat in its foreign policy. I examined the foreign policy by studying the argumentation of the United States to the current and future societal structure of Cuba in a report Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba (prepared by the U.S. government in 2004). The sociosemiotic tools - Greimas' actantial model, Perelman s argumentation analysis and Törrönen's pending narrative - helped me to discover that the U.S. Report can be seen as a grand discourse of threat. The main threat is that the Castro regime will not cease to exist and from that follows many other threats such as the violations of human rights and increasing poverty of the Cuban people. The Report argues, however, that the threats will continue to proceed from Cuba, first to the United States then to the rest of the western world. The United States has had the tendency to create discourses of threat in its foreign policy, which is a normal feature of foreign policy in general. In foreign policy different elements are actively created as threats to the others, so that the existence of the own country would become justified. The main agenda of the United States on Cuba could, therefore, be seen as the identity building of the U.S. (the justification of its existence and recovery of its manhood, lost due to the humiliation suffered by Castro s Cuba) and achievement of power in international relations by creating mutual understanding of the enemy.